Chattanooga’s CoLab Hosting Women’s 48 Hour Launch

Tennessee is a great state for startups. There are 9 accelerator regions across the state, that draw resources from Launch Tennessee, and one of the most active Startup America Regions. Startup Tennessee was the second Startup America region launched two years ago.

The major accelerator hubs across the state; Memphis,Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga work very well together and naturally collaborate on ideas and generally help each other out.

That’s why when Memphis held the UpStart 48 Hour Launch for women in December two young women from Chattanooga joined in the festivities and pitched in all weekend long. Next weekend on April 5th, Launch Your City Chief Relationship Officer Elizabeth Lemmonds, will return the favor by taking part in the city’s first women’s 48 Hour Launch.

48 Hour Launch works very similarly to the Startup Weekend model, just a few hours shorter.

Friday April 5th, the community will gather up all the interested female entrepreneurs. At that time the women will pitch their idea to the audience. A voting process will take place and it will be decided which teams will continue on to create a business in 48 Hours.

Saturday the teams will continue to work on their startups and Sunday they will be judged. Danielle Inez, and her event in a box startup, Pink Robin Avenue, won the Memphis event back in December. Inez won a free booth at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference.

CoLab has put together sponsor supported prize packages of great business services for the top three teams on Sunday.

For more information click here

4.2% of venture capital funded startup deals go to women.

Everywhereelse.co 2013 In Just About 3 Minutes (Ticket News for 2014) [video]

If you missed everywhereele.co The Startup Conference 2013, then you missed the largest single venue startup conference in the United States dedicated to one thing. That thing is, startups “everywhere else”.

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013, and Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 provide programming, celebrations, pitch contests, parties and networking opportunities that are extremely relevant for startups outside Silicon Valley.

The 2013 conference featured a huge startup village exhibition, along with workshops, keynotes, small groups and round table discussions on the issues that matter to startups in entrepreneurial pockets across the country and around the world.

Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else, Legaleeze, You Only Launch Once, applying and graduating from accelerators and more were at the forefront of the 2013 event. After parties that included free tickets to a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game, a historic brothel (Ernestine & Hazels), and the craziest throw back disco ever, dj’d by a world famous pimp (Raifords), were just some of the great social events.

2014 features a lot more similar content focused on acceleration, access to capital, access to talent, branding, design and pitching. Mike Muhney the godfather of CRM (co-creator of ACT which was the standard before SalesForce), Baker Donelson legal panels and workshops, and design, naming and branding with the folks at nationally known archer>malmo are just some of the discussions, topics and content coming in 2014.

The Marriott is offering $109 per night rooms for the event which runs February 17-19th 2014. American Airlines is also offering reduced fares and Avis is offering reduced rental cars.

This year we are also providing breakfast and lunch on both conference days.

Tennessee startup GreenPal and J Brant Films, Jeffrey Brant, who’s worked with national country recording artists in Nashville, have provided the video montage below. Check out Everywhereelse.co 2013 in nearly 3 minutes below.

The early bird special, where you can purchase attendee tickets and Startup Village booths at 2013 prices for the next conference, has been extended from March 27th to March 31st (Sunday night) or until the early bird tickets and startup village booths run out. Check out the ticket registration form below the video for availability.

Event management for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

Little Rock Entrepreneurs Prepare For Startup Weekend April 5-7th

We were recently in Arkansas for the kickoff of Startup Arkansas, it was there we got to meet some of the Arkansas community leaders. Arkansas has four major startup regions and Little Rock is one of them.

Over the course of SXSW we got to spend a lot of time with the Startup Weekend team and provided some non traditional coverage of the organization that’s not only supporting entrepreneurs but entire communities as well.

Startup Weekend is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a three day hackathon style event to create businesses. It’s also the best place to go when you have an “idea” according to Startup Weekend CEO Marc Nager.

The three day event heads to Little Rock next weekend April 5th-7th at the Clinton School of Public Services, 1200 President Clinton Ave, Little Rock, AR.

Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:30pm. That will be followed by great networking dinner where attendees will be able to size up the competition and the possible teammates for the weekend. The presentation will begin at 7:20pm. At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community coaches come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The coaches for Startup Weekend Little Rock are Kristian Anderson, KA+A Founder and President; Dustin Williams, UX Architect and Designer; Josh Clemence, CEO, Founder BLKBOXLabs; Mike Smith Jr, Advisor at Innovate Arkansas, Whitney Horton, Arkansas Small Business and technology development center marketing specialist; John Twyford, Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center Startup Finance & Management Consultant; Mike Steely, eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Coordinator, Arkansas Capital Corporation; Lee Watson, Owner of Clarovista; Ted Dickey, Advisor at Innovate Arkansas; Stuart McLendon, Senior Financial Analyst at CFO Network, Adjunct Professor of Finance at UALR; and Luke Coleman, Software Developer III at ABC Financial Services.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges. Startup Weekend Little Rock judges are: Millie Ward, Co-Founder/President Stone Ward; Jeff Amerine, Venture Capitalist/leader Innovate Arkansas; Arlton Lowry, Designer / Founder, Made by Few / Adjunct Professor of Art, UALR; Jeff Stinson, Director, Center for Innovation & Commercialization at UALR; and Jeanette Balleza, Bad Ass Startup Chick and Director ARK Challenge.

You can register for Startup Weekend Little Rock here

Here’s more Startup Weekend Stories at nibletz.com

Myth Busters: Money Does Not Grow On Trees In Silicon Valley [video]

Neil Parikh,Communly,Silicon Valley,startup,startup tips,launchyourcity

Communly co-founder Neil Parikh talks with Memphis based entrepreneur Ryan Ramkhelawan at the LaunchLounge on location in Silicon Valley (photo: NMI 2013)

We just wrapped up the LaunchYourCity, nibletz.com mission to Silicon Valley. On that trip we spent lots of time connecting to investors, accelerators, incubators, entrepreneurs and startup founders from San Francisco to Mountain View and everywhere in between.

As the voice of startups everywhere else, we kept our minds open throughout the trip and soaked up every nook and cranny of information that we could.

In working with hundreds of startups across the country, and around the world (everywhere else), we have found that a lot of people think money grows on trees in the valley.

In talking with a variety of Silicon Valley based startups in various stages we found that, that’s not the case. In some cases it’s actually harder to raise money in the valley because there’s much more competition.

Silicon Valley is like the Hollywood of statups. Founders move to Silicon Valley in droves in hopes of getting their big idea discovered. It certainly isn’t that easy.

You have to figure for every idea out there, there are three more people working on that same thing. Sure the biggest VC’s are based in Silicon Valley but they’re getting pitched every minute of everyday. One VC we spoke with said he, like Mark Cuban, routinely gets pitched in the bathroom.

Sure all startups are looking for their big funding break and all VC’s are looking for the next Facebook or Instagram, but the chances that the two will connect are very difficult.

More than one startup founder told us that they had raised money at home, and thought that was the signal that they were ready to raise in Silicon Valley and now they’ve moved onto another startup.

There are several factors that could account for this happening. One is that when you grow your startup in your hometown and can pick up any bit of local traction, your local investors know you. They’ve seen you grow and seen your failures and victories. When you venture out to Silicon Valley you quickly become just another startup.

There’s also a much better chance that an angel or VC in Silicon Valley has heard your particular idea hundreds of times, where your local investors have only heard it once, from you.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t move to Silicon Valley? Not necessarily there are advantages too that we’ll be posting about later. This is definitely some nourishing food for thought though.

We got a chance to talk to 21 year old serial entrepreneur Neil Parikh of Communly about the myth that money grows on trees in Silicon Valley. Check out the video below and check out communly here.

Find a lot more great startup tips here at nibletz.com

Henry Blodget On Which Screen Is Best: All Of Them [video][SAI]

Henry Blodget, the CEO and Editor In Chief, at Business Insider, kicked off the Ignition Mobile conference in San Francisco this past Thursday. Blodget’s long and storied career in investment, media and technology makes him an expert in all things mobile.

While everyone, startups specifically, are inundated with the words “Mobile First”, that doesn’t necessarily jive with the way things in the world really are.

During his quick keynote Thursday morning, where he showed 105 slides in less than 15 minutes, Blodget showed one photo of the newsroom at Business Insider, where his reporters are still using monitors, big monitors, small monitors, horizontal monitors and vertical monitors.

So is Blodget saying “mobile first” is wrong?

No, towards the end of the presentation he said that companies need to be everywhere. On the big screen, the phone, and the tablet.

Consumers are consuming content anywhere and everywhere. People are reading websites, downloading apps and watching videos everywhere from the bathroom to the boardroom.

In this video Blodget actually talks about how the TV is just about a thing of the past and more people are using their tablets in the bedroom.

The Business Insider empire is one of the quickest growing media sites in the world, and they continue to grow every week. If you’re running a startup this is definitely food for thought:

Check out our other coverage from Ignition Mobile.

Everywhereelse.co 2014 Early Bird Tickets Down To 12, Village Booths 5

After the huge success of everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference last month in Memphis Tennessee, we immediately went to work on 2014.

Dell, American Airlines, Amazon, .co, Baker Donelson, and Archer Malmo have signed on to support the 2014 event of the year and we’ve got more programming, more workshops, FOOD and more for 2014.

Everywhereelse.co 2013 the startup conference featured three days of programming, three startup pitching contests with $60,000 in cash given away, three amazing after parties and every attendee (1280) went to the Memphis Grizzlies NBA game that sunday night.

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the event for startups “Everywhere Else” we saw attendees from 41 different states and 7 countries with 72 startups from across the country. It’s the largest single venue startup conference in the country and the largest startup conference in the world dedicated to startups everywhere else.

If you’re interested in sponsoring email info@everywhereelse.co

1280 people packed in the ballroom for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013

Some of our speakers in 2013 included: Scott Case (CEO of Startup America and Co-Founder of Priceline), Ingrid Vanderveldt, Rohit Bhargava, Danny Boice, Brant Cooper, Pat Vlaskovitz, Gabe Lozano, 500 startups graduate Sara Ware and more.

2014 we add more content, a hackathon with Amazon Web Services, Free breakfast and lunch and more.

We introduced the 2014 tickets at 2013 prices, ending on March 27th when our first price increase kicks in. We set aside 400 attendee tickets at the early bird rate and 50 startup village booths. As you can see below we’re down to 12 attendee tickets and 5 startup booths (at least at the time this was written)

Event Registration Online for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

For more on the conference check out these stories at nibletz

“Early Bird” Tickets And Startup Village Booths Running Out For EE2014

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference was the largest single venue startup conference in the US and the biggest startup conference in the US focused entirely on startups outside the valley. Over 2000 tickets were sold and 1287 people checked in at the three day event in Memphis Tennessee.

Everywhereelse.co 2014 is poised to be bigger and better, especially because we’ve had a lot longer to plan and the first event is under our belts so we know what needs to be improved.

Great sponsors like Baker Donelson, archer>malmo, Independent Bank, Dell and American Airlines are already on board for 2014 with many more announcing soon. If you’re interested in sponsoring send an email to info@everywhereelse.co

With our sneaker strapped road trip, SXSW and our recent trip out west we haven’t been keeping an eye on the early bird tickets and Startup Village booths, well we just looked and as of the publishing of this article there were only 9 Startup Village booths left at the early bird rate and only 18 attendee tickets. The early bird rate ends in 5 days on March 27th and it gets you in the conference as an attendee or Startup Village booth at 2013’s rates. After that they go up!

The Startup Village booth ticket gets your startup booth space, in multiple pitch competitions and three attendee tickets. The booth space includes a table, two chairs, backdrop, and a waste paper basket. This year it will also include a sign with your startups name on it! Startups also get access to a private party and their name and contact info in the take home program, and their description on the website.

Don’t wait once these tickets are gone they’re gone and at the rate they’re going they’ll be gone this weekend.

Event Registration Online for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

Check out all the coverage of everywhereelse.co 2013 click here

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison On The Paypal Mafia [video][Ignition Mobile]

This morning at Business Insider’s Ignition Mobile, Deputy Editor Nicholas Carlson interviewed 24 year old Irish rock star entrepreneur, Patrick Collison the CEO of payment startup Stripe.

While there was much debate as to whether Collison became a millionaire at ate 19, one thing that’s been turning heads about this mobile payment startup is that their investors include Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Elon Musk, the original founders of Paypal who are widely known as the “Paypal Mafia”.

One might find it odd that these three men who helped shape the web payment and now mobile payment space, may not want to invest in a company that competes with the one they founded.

Collison said that he believes that Thiel, Musk and Levchin, are still determined to solve the problems that they set out to solve with Paypal and the new problems that have cropped up in the mobile age.

All three founders are now removed from Paypal after selling the company for $1.5 billion back in 2002 to eBay,Paypal’s largest user.

While Paypal has been busy pushing an offline product to retail and working towards a more prominent position in the mobile space, Collison said he felt that innovation at Paypal stopped when Levchin, Musk and Thiel exited.

Check out the video below:

Business Insider’s Ignition Mobile: Henry Blodget On How We Use Mobile

Business Insider’s Ignition Mobile conference kicked off this morning in San Francisco. To kick off the general session, Business Insider’s CEO and Editor In Chief, Henry Blodget ran through 105 slides in just under 15 minutes, basically providing an overview of what’s going on in the mobile industry’s to date.

Is this relevant to startups, and startups everywhere else?

Of course it is. Mobile is the fastest growing technology space in history. Mobile is now outpacing traditional PC sales, and most people have not one, not two but three or more screens.

Mobile usage is increasing ten fold. Gaming, music, social, video and of course search are dominating mobile.

Mobile, specifically tablets have increased in the bedroom. Consumers are consuming content on their iPads laying in bed more so than watching tv.

Mobile is giving advertisers a much more holistic approach, but Blodget warns that mobile is extremely intimate and advertisers with intrusive ads are going to lose. Blodget sees value across a variety of opportunities for new mobile apps and mobile startups.

Check out the video below:

Tennessee Showcasing Startups, Culture And More At Southland June 11th and 12th

Launch Tennessee and the Music City Music Council have teamed up to hold a new startup and innovation conference in Nashville in June. The conference, called Southland, butts up to two of the regions biggest music events, Bonaroo and the Country Music Association Music Festival.

This unique scheduling allows fans of both music and innovation to plan a nice 10 day trip to Nashville and enjoy a mixture of both.

Southland will feature venture capitalists and angel investors from across the country along with an extensive lineup of speakers and panelists with a firsthand knowledge of the power of innovation and its ability to transform a region’s ecosystem. Speakers include Sarah Lacy (Founder, PandoDaily), Michael Sippy (Vice President of Consumer Products, Twitter), Michael Marquez (Co-Founder, Code Advisors), KC Estenson (SVP & GM, CNN Digital), Ali Partovi (Co-Founder, Code.org), and many more from CNN, Scripps Networks Interactive, IBM and others.

“The Southeast is a hotbed for technology startups,” notes Charlie Brock, CEO of LaunchTN. “This conference is going to be the premier event for bringing together the best our region has to offer in entrepreneurs and cultural tastemakers, along with investors, technology and health care executives from around the country.”

In addition to the usual startup conference programming, like a startup village, and engaging keynotes speakers and panels, Southland will also offer a “Makers Marketplace” of southern culture featuring local musicians, BBQ pit masters, small batch distillers and southern artisans.

Unlike the national everywhereelse conference hosted in Memphis Tennesse, which highlights startups and innovation across, Southland is poised to be the largest regional conference for innovation and startups. Sandwiched in between the two major musical events, the Southland conference will offer an unheard of and very attractive cultural and innovation injection to all attendees.

Tickets are only $300, interested in attending visit southlandse.com

Nibletz provide the best startup coverage in the southeast, here’s more!

Startup Village Booths At Everywhereelse.co 2014 On Early Bird Special

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, was a smashing success. 1287 people from across the country and around the world came to Memphis Tennessee to celebrate entrepreneurship “everywhere else”.

The conference featured great speakers like Scott Case, Ingrid Vanderveldt, Danny Poice, Patrick Vlaskovits, Brant Cooper, Gabe Lozano and many many more.

The conference featured over 75 startups in the startup village that came from all over the country. There were several panels, workshops and of course great parties.

The next conference is going to be even better. American Airlines,Amazon Web Services,.co, Dell, Baker Donelson, Independent Bank, and Archer Malmo have already signed on as major sponsors for next year and we still have room for more. The convention center has been paid for and the catering has as well. We’re also planning three smaller events in Miami, DC and Cincinnati.

Many attendees have already taken advantage of the attendee ticket special going on now. Now through March 27th you can buy your attendee ticket for the same price as 2013. Well now we’ve added the same early bird special for Startup Village booths. Now through March 27th you can get a startup village booth, with preferred placement, logo on the promotional t-shirt which prints in May and many other perks for just $295. But on March 28th that goes up to $550.

You can download the Startup Village packet here

If you’re interested in regular sponsorship (with huge early bird perks and benefits) you can download the Sponsor packet here

Visit the conference site at everywhereelse.co

And you can get your Startup Village booth ticket here, for just $295 through March 27th. It’s fully refundable less $50 before Jan 1, 2014

Online event registration for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

Where Do You Go With An Idea? Startup Weekend Of Course! [video][sxsw]

Startup Weekend is a great event. To date they’ve done over 560 Startup Weekend’s in 107 countries and that keeps on growing. While they hold events in Silicon Valley, Startup Weekend is a huge, community catalyst “everywhere else”.

Many cities like New York, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dallas and Los Angeles have had multiple Startup Weekend events, Startup Weekend CMO Joey Pomerenke told nibletz.com they still get excited when newbies organize their first event.

So what role does Startup Weekend play in the grand scheme of startup communities and startup ecosystems?

Well at a panel at SXSW, Startup Weekend CEO Marc Nager, talked about that role specifically. “Where do you go with an idea” he asked the audience. Do you go to an investor, no that’s not going to work out. Do you go spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer, and team just to start AB testing?

Startup Weekend provides a great platform to see if ideas have what it takes to move to the next level. During the 54 hour experience your peers will vote on whether they like the idea, then you’ll create something, do market research, and present it again. Doing this on your own, could take weeks, or months, with Startup Weekend you have 54 hours, and you’ll know whether to move on or not.

Does it work? Absolutely, companies like Zaarly, Rumgr, and Fundable are all Startup Weekend graduates.

Startup Weekend’s roots in the community go much further than a testing platform though. Nager said on the panel that they are working on getting different components of their own ecosystem to function in unison across the country and around the world. Startup Weekend is looking for their Startup Weekend, Startup Weekend NEXT and Startup Weekend EDU facilitators to work together in their communities. They are also looking to the Startup Digest curators to do that as well.

When all of the components work in harmony the entire Startup Weekend ecosystem, and the hundreds of communities it touches, benefit.

On the panel, moderator Lesa Mitchell, of the Kauffman Foundation, a major supporter of Startup Weekend, kept prying with Nager to find out what doesn’t work. He was hard pressed to find something that doesn’t work. Obviously at the entrepreneur level there can be issues. Egos can get in the way and even underhanded moves, like this, can get in the way.

Overall though, Startup Weekend continues to do a great job of driving communities worldwide.

Here’s that video. We’ve got more Startup Weekend coverage here, and you can find out more at StartupWeekend.org

Check out more of our SXSW 2013 coverage here.

Startup Weekend Education Movie Debuts At SXSWedu

sxswedu,startup weekend edu,startup weekend,startup weekend movie,sxsw,sxsw13

(l to r: Chapman Snowden (Kinobi/Startup Weekend EDU), Adam Stelle (COO Startup Weekend), Vinny Verma (1887 Films) photo: NIM 2013)

Startup Weekend Education is a 54 hour long event that utilizes the same startup hacking weekend format that traditional Startup Weekend events use. They’ve been held all over the country, including Silicon Valley, New York, DC, and Florida. There have also been several successful Startup Weekend Education events overseas.

The movie, produced by Vinnny Verma of 1887 films, chronicles Startup Weekend Education events in Silicon Valley and New York City.

In New York, the focal point is Kevin Tame, who taught 8th grade math at Booker T Washington middle school in Baltimore Maryland. The idea for his startup Student Dashboard, is that kids don’t like to spend time logging into all the various apps and platforms they need for school.

Tame felt that if he could simplify the process he would give back a much needed commodity, time, and not only to the students but the teachers as well.

On the west coast the film turns to Rob Schwartz a 16 year educator and principal. His problem was that students and teachers need better ways to produce and consume content. His startup, MySciHigh went on to win the Silicon Valley event and is now in 35 schools across the country.

The movie was screened as part of the SXSWedu event at the legendary Alamao Draft House and Theater.

Startup Weekend’s COO Adam Stelle, Verma and Chapman Snowden of Kinobi and Starutp Weekend Edu all participated in a panel discussion after the viewing.

One thing that caught my eye was during the film Tame had said that he had gone to the NY event only to work on his project and didn’t want to work on any other project. This actually goes against the grain of traditional Startup Weekend events. We’ve been to over 60 Startup Weekend’s and at those events entrepreneurs are encouraged to stay and participate whether their idea is picked for building or not.

Stelle explained that at Startup Weekend Edu the hackers are actually teachers, and many come in specifically to get help “scratching their own itch.” Verma said that he had actually spent time contemplating this issue and went with it because if fit with Tame’s character.

Regardless, the movie was a great look at what happens when you get people together working on common problems.

“We’re too concerned about talking about the problem than real world action,” Tame said in the film in regards to teaching. He went on to say that at the Startup Weekend edu event people were talking about problems and solutions.

Tame’s team didn’t have a designer or a developer. Tame and a partner ended up hacking together the entire idea, and a pitch deck with one minute to spare.

Tame has transitioned from a Teach For America corps teacher to the organizations Director of Design and Technology, moving to this position in part because of his involvement with Startup Weekend edu.

The movie, which is finally edited down and ready to go, will be online and shown at several startup events across the country.

To find out more about how to host a Startup Weekend event in your city visit startupweekend.org

Find more of our Startup Weekend coverage here.

Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Jeannette Balleza Director, Ark Challenge

As you probably heard, women in startups played a big roll in the inaugural everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. The conference which had over 1200 attendees on site featured panels like “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” and other panels which featured startup founders from everywhere else.

One of those bad ass startup chicks that was in the audience and networking all conference long was Jeannette Balleza the director of Ark Challenge, Arkansas’ premiere startup accelerator, and member of the Global Accelerator Network.

Balleza is no stranger to startups. After college she went straight to startup life launching her own company, Scribe Marketing. She is also the co-founding archivist of the award winning family history website DeadFred.

Balleza is a busy busy woman but always finds time to strengthen the Arkansas startup community every chance she gets.

She serves as a Board Member of the Northwest Arkansas Entrepreneurship Alliance, advises a number of small businesses and non-profit organizations and is part of the team spearheading the region’s first co-working space, The Iceberg. She is a member of The CEO Forums of Northwest Arkansas, and she coordinates the Professional Women’s Network Washington County. She was honored as one of Northwest Arkansas Business Journal‘s “40 Under 40” in 2008, and in 2009 she was selected as one of 135 U.S. entrepreneurs by British Airways to attend The Face of Opportunity Global Business Summit Conference in London.

We caught up with her, not in NorthWest Arkansas but rather in Central Arkansas for the ThinkBig Arkansas event and the kick off of Startup Arkansas. She provided a quick speech to attendees with an update about Ark Challenge and the exciting new Iceberg coworking space. Check out our interview below, the first of many to come in our series Bad Ass Startup Chicks.